Samuel Dickstein (February 5, 1885 – April 22, 1954) was a Democratic congressional representative from New York (22-year tenure), a New York State Supreme Court Justice, and a Soviet spy. He played a key role in establishing the committee that would become the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which he used to attack fascists, including Nazi sympathizers, and suspected communists. In 1999, authors Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev learned that Soviet files indicate that Dickstein was a paid agent of the NKVD.

Background

Dickstein was born on February 5, 1885, into a Jewish family of five children near Vilna in the Russian Empire (now known as Vilnius, Lithuania). His parents were Rabbi Israel Dickstein (died 1918) and Slata B. Gordon (died 1931). In 1887, his family immigrated to the United States. They settled on the Lower East Side of New York City. Dickstein attended public and private schools, the City College of New York, and in 1906 graduated from New York Law School.

Career

thumb|left|Dickstein's official [[New York State Assembly|State Assembly portrait, 1919|upright]]

In 1908, Dickstein passed the bar and began private practice in New York with the firm of Hyman and Gross.

Congressional career

In 1922, Dickstein was elected as a Democrat to the Sixty-eighth Congress, defeating Socialist incumbent Meyer London. He was reelected eleven times. He resigned from Congress on December 30, 1945.

From 1934 to 1937, this Special Committee, with John William McCormack (D-MA) as chairman and Dickstein as vice-chairman, held public and private hearings and collected testimony filling 4,300 pages, and it was replaced with a similar committee that focused on pursuing communists. Its records are held by the National Archives and Records Administration as records related to HUAC. No one was prosecuted. Nonetheless, the Special Committee "delet[ed] extensive excerpts relating to Wall Street financiers including Guaranty Trust director Grayson Murphy, J. P. Morgan, the Du Pont interests, Remington Arms, and others allegedly involved in the plot attempt. (Even in 1975, a full transcript of the hearings could not be traced.)"

At the time of the incident, news media at first reported on the plot earnestly, then quickly changed course and dismissed the plot. For instance, The New York Times newsroom gave the plot front-page coverage until an editorial characterized it as a "gigantic hoax". Historians have found no evidence for the existence of the plot beyond Butler's claims.

Throughout the rest of 1934, the Special Committee conducted hearings, bringing before it most of the major figures in the U.S. fascist movement. Dickstein, who proclaimed as his aim the eradication of all traces of Nazism in the U.S., personally questioned each witness. His flair for dramatics and sensationalism, along with his sometimes exaggerated claims, continually captured headlines across the nation and won him much public recognition.

Democratic leaders in the House distrusted Dickstein. They were unaware of his spying or his bribery, but they did know he brutally browbeat and threatened witnesses, grossly exaggerating evidence, and they removed him from membership on the committee.

In September 1945, not long before stepping down from office, Dickstein called the Dies Committee's investigations into Hollywood "a lot of ballyhoo" about an industry that is almost "100 per cent American" and also asserted that "the alien problem is dying away."

NKVD espionage

Peter Duffy wrote: <blockquote>An Austrian working for the Soviets approached him and asked for help in securing American citizenship. Dickstein told the man that the quota for Austrian immigrants was filled but for $3,000 he would see what he could do. Dickstein said he had "settled dozens" in a similarly illegal fashion, according to the NKVD memo on the meeting. Moscow concluded that Dickstein was "heading a criminal gang that was involved in shady businesses, selling passports, illegal smuggling of people, [and] getting citizenship." Kurt Stone wrote that Dickstein "was, for many years, a 'devoted and reliable' Soviet agent whom his handlers nicknamed Crook." but it has been unsuccessful.

See also

  • List of Jewish members of the United States Congress

References

  • Library of Congress Photo of Dickstein with Paul Whiteman, Caroline O'Day, and James H. Gildea (March 15, 1927)
  • "Samuel Dickstein", Spartacus Educational.